Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle…

Yoshi in Super Mario Galaxy 2

My first encounter with Yoshi comes in the “Yoshi Star Galaxy: Saddle Up with Yoshi” level. Hmm… what do you know.

I have to laugh, too, because when they introduce Yoshi they make a comment about how they’d thought he would help, but he’s just running around in circles and being a complete waste of space (okay, that’s been paraphrased). How funny! I know I’ve had many a frustrated moment trying to corral an escaped Yoshi…

Anyways, Yoshi is a lot of fun to ride and pretty intuitive. You can still shake the Wii remote to break objects while you’re on him and he’s got all of the standard Yoshi techniques. I like the little animation they use around eatable objects–it’s not too obtrusive and lets you know when you get close enough to gobble something up.

Yoshi also has some fun new powers. His tongue can grab and pull things (like handles) and can even pull you along for the ride if you try to eat a floating, white flower (similar to the blue stars you can grab and hover towards in SMG 1). His new tongue powers remind me of the whip in Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Anyone? No, just me? Okay.

After completing the first Yoshi level, I get a Yoshi egg on my ship. Right on top of my faceship’s big, honking nose. So now that I’ve got Yoshi on my ship, I can get up to a special little pavilion where I can eat a bunch of fruit, Yoshi poops out some stars, and I get a 1up. Fun stuff. I can also jump high enough to get to the chimney, which just takes me down to the creepy engine room (why are there bookshelves there, again?).